Predator is probably the most unflinchingly macho film in existence, but does the blockbuster's chain guns and shoulder cannons and cigar smoking hide a much more nuanced tale of sexual awakening? Here's a cheeky psychoanalysis of everyone's favorite Yautja thriller.

The writer of this piece was inspired in part by J.G. Ballard's 1968 psychosexual assessment of the then-governor of California, Why I Want To Fuck Ronald Reagan. Here's the introduction to An Exegesis of the Sexual Subtext in Predator:

An excerpt from Sir J. Thurgood Snorpington-Pittwickett's classic "Sexual Tyrannosaurus: ‘Predator' and the masculine struggle with homosexual self-identity," first published in the 1988 Journal of Psychosexuality and Cinematical Hermeneutics 6, p. 122-254.*

"Using post-freudian dialectical analysis, it becomes clear that the 1987 action film ‘Predator' is an allegory for the gay male struggle to accept a differing sexual identity than is appropriate in a dominant hetero-normative cultural system. As we see the character Dutch, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger struggle to understand and accept the existence of the Predator, we are actually witnessing the struggle for dominance in the psyche of a gay man who has not yet understood or accepted his own identity. The jungle of Dutch's mind is the setting for the fight between his Super-Ego, manifested in the team of hyper-masculine marines, and the Id of the Predator, who represents a pure homosexual archetype.